Nana Korobi, Ya Oki
Seung Hye Yang (Queens High School for the Sciences at York College)
“Nana korobi, ya oki” means “Fall down seven times, get up eight” in Japanese. It took me a long
while before I fully understood what that meant. Growing up as the firstborn daughter of a very traditional
East Asian family was a heavy burden to carry, because anything less than perfect was absolutely
unacceptable. I was raised to believe that my self-worth was defined by the straight A’s I was expected to
bring home, by the pride I brought to my parents. I was raised to be exemplary. And for a while, I thought I
was. That all changed in 8 th grade. I was at the highest point of my life, or so I thought. I had the best
grades in my class, and I would always show up on the top honor rolls in school. I was the daughter all the
other Asian parents wanted their children to be. My parents bragged to their peers about my every
accomplishment. Teachers would constantly remind me that I was set up for a bright future. I thought this
was it. I thought I was happy. But deep down inside, I knew I wasn’t. There was always the nagging feeling
that something was missing- and the realization came all at once. I was completely empty inside. I had
nothing but the so-called “honor” I valued so much. Who was I? If you took away my grades and my
manners, I had absolutely nothing.

This realization hit me like a brick, and around the same time, my grades began to fall drastically.

For me, a girl who knew how to do nothing but study, it was a difficult time. I lost the respect of my
parents, who felt the need to remind me every day how disappointed they were in me. I was disappointed in
me. It was all too much at once, and it was terrifying how I couldn’t get back up again. I’d never
experienced failure before in my life, and now I was one.

What saved me was my 8 th grade exit project. We were told to depict a certain part of World War II,
in any kind of media. I chose to make a comic book about the bombing of Hiroshima. I loved history, but I
always unconsciously drifted away from the whole picture, opting only to focus on the winners’ point of
view. However, for the first time in my life, I chose to focus on the history of the losing side, to see just
how things went down for them.

I was absolutely horrified. I went in knowing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only two places in
history to be attacked with the atomic bomb, but I never knew the terrifying effects of the nuclear energy
that came with it. Studying the bombing of Hiroshima opened my eyes to a new world. I was forced to look
at images I would have otherwise never stomached, to read the graphic accounts of firsthand witnesses, to
feel the despair that surely rose over the city as it smoldered and burned. I read about how the innocent
civilians in direct contact with the bomb’s initial radius either died immediately, or died shortly from
throwing their burning bodies into contaminated water. I read about how the people near the bomb were
blinded by the light, and how people in the future were afflicted by the after-effects of the radiation that
followed. I was utterly in shock, and found myself wondering just how this city looked like today.

Naturally, it came as a complete shock when I saw that today, Hiroshima is a beautiful, modern city
with skyscrapers and highways. I learned that after the bombing, the people of Japan and the world worked
together to rebuild the destroyed city. In that moment, I knew the most important thing I learned from the
project was that you could always bounce back. Failure is inevitable, but it is merely a setback. It’s okay to
stumble and fall, you’re human. Hiroshima went from a thriving city to nothing, to a thriving city once
more. The people never gave up on Hiroshima, and it returned to its former glory in a matter of decades. I
saw Hiroshima in me.

Nana korobi, ya oki. I can feel myself falling again. I’ve fallen countless times since then. It may be
the seventh time, or the hundredth time, I’ve lost count. But it doesn’t really matter. I’ve learned to get back
up. Bibliography
“Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” History.com History.com. Staff. 2009. Web.

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki 103